Page 97 of The Treasure House

Elton sighed. “No, Jake’s mother’s not dead. She’s in a nursing home in Camden, so she can be close to Marly.”

I felt like he’d slapped me. “Wait, what? Marly’s alive?”

“Alive and kicking and living in Camden.”

“But… hold on.” This wasn’t sinking in. “Marly of Marly’s place? My place?”

“That’s the one.”

His words replayed in my head. She’s in a nursing home in Camden, so she can be close to Marly. “Elton?”

“Yes, my dear?” He was regarding me kindly, seeing the effect the news had on me.

“Why does Jake’s mom need to be close to Marly?” I thought I knew the answer but I needed to hear him say it.

“Because she’s Marly’s daughter.”

Of course. If this had been Marly’s place and Jake’s place… and Jake’s mom was Marly’s daughter. “Marly’s Jake’s grandmother.”

The alarm went off on Elton’s phone and he fumbled to pull it out of his pocket. “Oh lordy, I almost forgot to take my medication again.”

I saw the time on his phone and yelped. I was going to be late for work. “Thanks, Elton,” I said, as I backed away down my driveway. “I have to go.

“Have a good day, Zoe,” he called. “You might want to turn your sweater around before you go to work. You’ve got it on inside out.”

Flo sent me a dozen photos of her flower girl dress fitting, and another dozen photos of her lunch, which seemed to consist of a towering stack of pancakes and a waterfall of syrup. Then she demanded more proof-of-life photos of her cats.

Jake didn’t message me once. The day dragged at work as I checked my phone compulsively. But no messages.

I had all the usual thoughts. Had I just been used? Had he fed me a line to get me in bed? Not even in bed, on the couch. But then I shook it off, remembering his haunted look at the window. I was living in his mom’s house. The house he’d spent three months of the year in growing up, the summer house that made him fall in love with Oxeye.

I wondered which bedroom had been his: Flo’s? Or the room with all the clothes in it? I remembered his familiarity with the house when he’d given us the tour, his attention to detail as he rebuilt the porch screens and turned the old laundry into a new room. He loved the house. So why hadn’t he kept it?

Was it about money?

The thought made my stomach sink. I hated the idea that he might have been forced to sell it. No wonder he’d seemed so hostile that first day.

In the afternoon, I went down rabbit holes online looking up the symptoms of early-onset dementia—which looked like it started a lot earlier than I’d realized. It began with losing the ability to handle money and pay bills, struggling to bathe, and some mild personality changes. It escalated to failing to recognize people, losing the ability to read and write, and withdrawing from the world. The final stage involved being unable to communicate, having no awareness of your surroundings, incontinence, and losing the ability to swallow. Patients who reached this stage made uncontrollable noises, had no interest in food, had seizures.

I thought of Jake’s haunted look and my heart ached. How long had his mother lived in the house? How far gone had she been before they moved her to the nursing home?

Jake lived on the corner of her street for a reason, I thought suddenly. It wasn’t just because he loved the town. He’d been caring for her. I remembered the scrubbed bathroom and the immaculate master bedroom we’d found on our tour. He had done that for her.

Hey, I texted Jake, deciding I couldn’t wait for him to do it. But he didn’t text back.

Driven by the memory of his face at the window, on the way home I stopped at the market and bought a bunch of hothouse roses and some supplies for dinner. As I turned into Tinker Street, I saw that the hardware store and apartment above were dark. There was no sign of Jake or Hazel. I pulled over in front of his place and grabbed a pen from my handbag. I ripped a page from the back of my daily planner, scribbled a note on it—Come to my place when you get this?—and tucked it into the bunch of roses. Then I ran up the back stairs and left them propped against his kitchen door.

When I got home, the house was freezing, even with the heating on, and the cats were curled together in the laundry basket in Flo’s room, surrounded by all the clothes she hadn’t put away before she left. I brought the cats downstairs, carrying them in the basket, and set them in front of the fireplace in the kitchen. The minute they smelled food they came leaping out of the basket, mewing like crazy. I took a million photos of them and sent them to Flo. Then I lit the fire and, as the hearth heated up, watched them sprawl in a higgledy-piggledy row in front of it, grooming themselves and each other.

I put the fire guard up, threw dinner on, and raced upstairs to shower, just in case Jake came by. My clothes were still strewn everywhere from the night before, when I couldn’t decide what to wear, and I picked them up and crammed them into the chest of drawers. I’d sort it out tomorrow. I opted for my fleece yoga pants, a loose sweater, and a thick pair of ski socks, figuring tonight was about easing tension, not dressing to impress.

The casserole would keep warm for as long as it took. I was antsy as I waited, checking my phone but hearing only from Flo, who hearted all one million of the cat photos. One by one the cats jumped back in the basket and went back to sleep, enjoying the fire. I fidgeted for a while and then migrated to the dining room, ostensibly to kill some time sorting culch, but actually to spy on Tinker Street. From here I had a good view down the street to Jake’s place.

But the hardware store and apartment above were still dark.

The weather had eased, and the clouds were breaking to reveal inky patches of moonless sky. Everything seemed hushed, like the whole street was exhaling after the storm.

I flipped through the paintings stacked behind the door. There were a lot of coastal landscapes, many of them brooding, some charcoals too, and a handful of bright still life oil paintings of summer flowers. I realized I might want to keep some of them. Including the map of Maine Jake had mentioned when he took us around on our initial tour. There was no X marking buried treasure, but it was a beautiful old map, and there was another one of Knox County, which looked hand drawn and colored. I pulled it out and put it on the dining table, peering at it to find Oxeye. I hadn’t realized there were so many islands out there in the bay. The map might look good in the hall…